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Neiges mortelles (Miklo)/plot
Biggles and co. are heading to Calcutta in a Catalina after a mission in Burma. Enroute, Air Commodore Raymond diverts them north towards Tawang, the capital of the Kingdom of Gopan, a small state in the Himalayas near the Tibetan border. On arrival, they are given a rather cold reception by Morhandas, the prime minister and taken to see the king, Jawarhal. The king tells Biggles and co. that a mysterious and deadly disease has struck several of the kingdom's remote villages. The king is convinced that it is the result of a criminal plot by someone. He is calling on his British allies to help invesitgate. The king tells Biggles that his subjects rely on him to intercede with the mountain spirits for their well being. If he could not solve this problem, his legitimacy would be undermined and he would be forced to abdicate. This would leave his kingdom at the mercy of China to the north. Biggles and co. receive a visit from Alexandra Morrison, the British diplomatic representative in the kingdom. She advises them to call the mission off as it is too dangerous. The weather in the mountains is unpredictable and the storms are violent. She herself had suggested that the British abandon the region and focus their diplomatic efforts elsewhere. For her this is all about political realism. After she leaves, Biggles tells his team they cannot fail to help people in need. Being politically realistic has never been their strong point. While Biggles and Algy study the maps and reports, Ginger and Bertie take a walk and are surprised to find Morhandas with several guards beating a man. Morhandas tells Ginger and Bertie not to interfere. They are to stay in their rooms and not leave without permission. The guards hustle the two back to their apartment like prisoners. The next morning, Algy and Bertie make the first reconnaissance of the villages affected by the disease. Algy notices that the villages had something in common: they were all next to rivers. Someone could be poisoning the water! The rivers all flowed from the mountains to the north so he heads there for a closer look. Bertie spots a glint of metal on the ground. They land and find some empty barrels with Japanese inscriptions. Bertie takes the lid of a cover for evidence and they then take off for Tawang. Once airborne, they run into a violent storm. Algy tries to fly above the weather but is shocked to find that the controls do not respond. What they do not know is that someone had sabotaged the aircraft the night before. Bertie sends out an S.O.S. and gives their position. Meanwhile Algy attempts to land on a flat area. Too late, he realises that it is not solid ground but the surface of a frozen lake. The ice cracks and the Catalina plunges into the water. Back at Tawang, Biggles is unable to contact the Catalina by radio and gets worried. Miss Morrison commiserates. She had lost her father during a raid over the Philippines during the war so she knows how it feels to lose someone. The king hears of the disaster and summons them. Biggles tells the king he is not convinced Algy and Bertie are dead. If only they had an aircraft, they could do a proper search. The king surprises them by offering them one. His father had once planned to run an airline between Tawang and Calcutta and had bought an old aircraft for the purpose. The operation had to stop due to the lack of passengers and the outbreak of the Second World War. The king takes them to see the old aircraft: it's a Handley Page H.P. 45! Better yet, the king believes his father had trained a mechanic and this man had been maintaining the aircraft for nostalgia's sake! With the help of the mechanic, the aircraft is soon made ready and Biggles and Ginger take off to search for Algy and Bertie. Biggles had caught Bertie's last S.O.S. and heads for the co-ordinates Bertie transmitted. There they sight the Catalina in the lake. Biggles lands near the bank of the lake where the ice would be firmer. The cockpit of the Catalina is underwater. Biggles decides to try something desperate. He coats himself with engine grease as insulation and dives into the icy water to investigate. The cockpit is empty. Coming up, he quickly warms himself by a fire Ginger has made. Believing that Algy and Bertie would have gone downwards into the valley to find help, Biggles and Ginger head the same way and soon, to their surprise, they come across a monastery. The monks had been expecting them because ... Algy and Bertie are there! They had told the monks Biggles and Ginger would come looking for them. Algy and Bertie are sick and in bed but they tell Biggles of the barrels they had found. Biggles asks the head lama if he knows anything about these barrels. The head lama answers that his monks had seen strange things in a cave by an ancient road high in the mountains. He offers some men and yaks to take Biggles there. After a day's journey, they reach the cave and find more barrels with Japanese words which appear to hold a toxic substance. There are also barrels of fuel. Biggles decides to take a barrel of poison for analysis and some barrels of fuel for their aircraft. They return to the monastery where they collect Algy and Bertie who are brought on stretchers carried by yaks to the Handley Page. The aircraft is lightened as much as possible, and all the fuel they took is pumped into the tanks. They then take off. Algy and Bertie need medical attention so there is no point returning to Tawang. Biggles heads instead for Calcutta. Enroute, they are bounced by an I-153 biplane fighter in Chinese air force markings but Biggles manages to evade it by hiding in fog. They reach Calcutta and Algy and Bertie are sent to hospital. Air Commodore Raymond briefs Biggles and Ginger about the barrel they had retrieved. It comes from Unit 731, a biological warfare lab set up by the Japanese Army during the Second World War. Somebody had brought poisons from the lab in Manchuria all the way to Gopan to poison the population. To Raymond, it looks like the Chinese are doing it. They are the only ones with an interest in destabilizing Gopan but he doesn't have a shred of evidence. Biggles and Ginger must return to investigate further. As an aside, Raymond tells Biggles to send Miss Morrison her father's regards. Raymond had just met her father last week in Bombay. Miss Morrison's father? Biggles quickly asks to see Miss Morrison's dossier and gets a shock. Biggles and Ginger dash back to Tawang in a T-6 Harvard and rush to the palace. The king is with Morhandas. The prime minister orders the guards to remove them but Biggles tells the king that someone has been poisoning the villages. Morhandas says that is ridiculous. He draws a gun and orders the guards to arrest Biggles, Ginger and the king. He will take power himself. But Ginger shoots him. Biggles tells the king that medical supplies would soon be coming from Calcutta to treat the disease but in the meantime, they must also quickly arrest Miss Morrison. Too late, the dying Morhandas says. She is already heading for the mountains, and this time, no one in the kingdom will survive! Biggles understands the meaning. Telling Ginger to stay behind and look to the arrival of the medical supplies, he rushes back to the Harvard and heads north. Miss Morrison must be heading for the cave with all the barrels! He spots her in a truck but he is then intercepted by a Chinese I-16 fighter. Biggles leads his pursuer through a series of narrow ravines and causes the latter to crash. Back to Miss Morrison. She is crossing a bridge and about to enter the safety of a tunnel. This is his last chance. He fires the Harvard's guns and blows her truck up. Back at Tawang, Biggles learns that Raymond, who has flown up. Raymond tells the king that investigations have revealed that Morhandas had been ploting to overthrow the king and then annex the kingdom to Tibet. As for his accomplices, the Miss Morrison Biggles had met was an imposter. They had found the real Miss Morrison locked up in the cellar of her house. All ends well and Bertie gets his trophy from the trip to the Himalayas, a lama's hat. Category:Plot summaries (derivative works)